Computers and computer networks are widely used for various types of communication. Email is an early network application, and it has evolved over the years. Email correspondents can send emails including attachments that have been prepared using another application. These emails may be sent to one or many recipients, including some that may work for other companies.
This has created a few concerns, as any email attachments may contain proprietary or confidential information that should not be sent to certain potential recipients, such as those that work elsewhere. The user or users sending emails with attachments must use care to remove this information prior to sending the email.
This, however, may lead to another problem. Some applications are able to produce documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or other files for which a record of changes or transmissions or changes is also retained. This file revision history may include the changes made by several users. In addition, it may often be optionally displayed along with the file if desired, or hidden to make the file easier to read. This creates the risk of inadvertently sending a file along with file revision history that, when made visible, reveals information that the correspondent had not meant to send.
For this reason, some programs are available to application users that remove the file revision history, which they can use prior to sending. Or this user could simply remove the file revision history manually and save the file as another, “clean” version. Unfortunately, these solutions are still problematic. In many cases a user could, for example, simply forget to remove the file revision history from a document prior to attaching it to an email, or the user may not even be aware that the file revision history exists. An inadvertent disclosure of confidential information could still occur.
Accordingly, there has been and still is a need to address the aforementioned shortcomings and other shortcomings associated with network transmissions, especially outbound transmission such as email with attached documents. These needs and other needs are satisfied by the present invention.